It seems an eternity ago, but in reality was just over a year ago, when Doug Ford was campaigning for the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario and was telling voters he would find "efficiencies" within government to get the crippling deficit and debt under control.  Well a year has come and gone, and thus far his government has been inefficient with its time in office in immediately clawing back the excessive waste, failing to find much of anything when it comes to those so-called efficiencies that are supposed to save the province billions.

Instead, we've seen the Ford government promote gimmicky cost-cutting measures such as getting rid of landline telephones in government offices, bringing paper-bag lunches to caucus meetings, and Ford taking economy flights on business trips.

It's like Premier Ford took over management of the Fyre Festival, and to get exorbitant and unsustainable costs under control, simply cut a shipment of Fiji Water.

Not too long after getting into power, Ford announced to Toronto Sun editor-in-chief Adrienne Batra that his government would not be eliminating deficit spending until the next election.  Considering this province is the most indebted sub-sovereign nation in the developed world one would think that getting spending under control would be a top priority.

But what is becoming more apparent by the day is that Ford, once in office, is more interested in focusing on pet projects and pet peeves than doing the heavy lifting of actually getting the province's books in order.

Axing Toronto City Council in half was not something that needed to be done and resulted in no real savings for the provincial coffers.  Yet it did cause a furor in Toronto and wasted a lot of time and energy for Ford's nascent government right out of the gate.  But Ford wanted his revenge, so it became a top priority.

Attempting to get his underqualified police buddy installed as the next OPP commissioner, resulting in the firing of the deputy commissioner and the friend dropping out of the running, caused negative headlines for well over a month, and accomplished nothing for the premier.  But Ford values loyalty and wanted to get a souped-up RV so it was worth throwing away some reputational credibility apparently.

Keeping his other friend as his chief of staff despite his alleged tyrannical and unscrupulous methods seems to be a risky play, but Ford, again, values loyalty and rewarding his friends.  Vice versa, suspending veteran PC MPP Randy Hillier from caucus because he questions the direction of a sputtering administration looks like another surefire way to burn up more political capital for no gain.  The same goes for backtracking on French language cuts after already losing the MPP from a French-speaking riding, political capital spent for no taxpayer savings.

Ford, appearing always self-interested, has been busy attending fundraisers over the last several months, after rejigging fundraising laws, already focusing on his re-election.

If Premier Ford continues to focus on his pet peeves and pet projects instead of the grand scheme of things it won't matter how much money he's raised, his political capital will be tapped dry, along with the province's finances.

Photo Credit: CTV News

Written by Graeme C. Gordon

I'm too young to remember Sheila Copps as a cabinet minister under former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien.  If CBC sketch comedy is to be believed, she was a right larf in those days.  If her own tweets weighing in on the SNC-Lavalin scandal are to be believed, she still is.

Copps' feed reads as a perfect summary of the Liberal hack attitude toward former cabinet ministers Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott.  They're putting Canada at risk of a Conservative government. They're not true feminists.  Anyone who calls SNC corrupt is a Quebec-basher.  JWR should have gotten a 37th opinion. JWR doesn't actually have principles.  Copps is just as credible on the Indigenous affairs file as JWR because she set up a meeting that one time.  And, most of all, electing Liberals is the only path to progress.

That last one is the throughline in every criticism of JWR and Philpott to be published so far.  Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has a progressive, feminist agenda.  Trudeau leads the Liberal Party, which has always had a more progressive, feminist agenda than those other guys.  Therefore, the sole reasonable way to advance progressive, feminist ideals is to be onside with Trudeau and the Liberal Party at all times.  Yes, including those times when they want to give a private company a slap on the wrist for paying $50 million to a man whose father's government had used rape as a weapon of war.

Is this an old boys' mentality, as Diane Francis suggests in the Financial Post?  Not exactly.  After all, women were involved in pressuring JWR to decide in SNC's favour.  Female MPs have jumped to Trudeau's defence in droves, prompting suspicions of a coordinated social media storm, which they denied.  That JWR and Philpott are both female is merely a coincidence; any male cabinet minister had the chance to resign alongside the former.

No, this isn't an old boys' mentality.  This is an old Liberals' mentality.  JWR and Philpott may never eat roasted baby beet salad at the National Club again.  Per Andrew Cohen, himself a vanguard of the Librentian Consensus and one of only two pundits to provoke as many howls as Copps the other, of course, being Heather Mallick  this is the worst fate they could have written for themselves:

. . . Liberals will now see them as opportunistic and disloyal.  It was Trudeau who welcomed them as candidates, and carried them to power and into cabinet.  Now, their amour-propre wounded, they want to unseat the prime minister. . . . Amid the ruins, they may tell themselves that it was all worth it, that it is better to be right than in cabinet.  As Liberals, though, they're done.

I ask again, as I asked of losing one's place in a body that forces all of its entrants to check their powers of independent thought at the door to the Centre Block: So what?  JWR and Philpott are not so stupid as to discount the possibility that they won't get their nomination papers signed again.  For all we know, they may be putting out feelers for more lucrative, less Borg-like post-Parliament gigs as we speak.  Doubtless they'll get an offer or two.

Alas, in the world of Cohen, Mallick, and Copps, no offer will ever compare to the privilege of being a cabinet minister under Trudeau.  As such, you are entrusted with the care and protection of jobs, women, and Indigenous people that Liberals, and only Liberals, can provide.  No need to thank him; he feels your appreciation with every smile and nod.  Reject this privilege, however, and he will show you no mercy.

Trudeau's push for a more gender- and race-diverse cabinet has had the side effect of just a little too much ethical diversity for his comfort or that of his old guard mentors.  In Copps' day, when there were far fewer women at the cabinet table and even fewer visible minorities, this condescending paternalism would have flown.  It seems she cannot understand a version of Canadian politics in which it isn't flying a version in which two women, one of whom is Indigenous, have their own ideas about what they will and will not take in order to make good on visions for a more equitable country.  But if she insists on contributing to the conversation in a way that hurts her cause far more than it helps, allow me to be condescending in return: Just quiet down, baby.

Photo Credit: Macleans

Written by Jess Morgan